Sorry to post now on such a recent (and end-of-semester) entry, but I had an amusing experience that might give you some perspective.
I had a similar group of back-of-the-room gigglers. Beyond the giggling, I liked these students, and I was fairly certain that they were enjoying the class and learning from it. Several times I evil-eyed them, and several times I stopped the class to ask them if they wanted to share. None of these tricks stopped the giggles.
A month after class ended, I had a beer with one of the students (not too professional, maybe, but wtf). She told me that the source of the giggles was the regular appearance of the ass crack of a student who sat in front of them (brutally unprofessional, I know). The giggles were half amusement (apparently there were a plethora of text messages that went back and forth on the topic of the crack) and half anxiety ("Should we tell her about it? It's not exactly the same as tucking in her the tag that's hanging out of the back of her shirt..."). Nothing to do with me. Rude, yes, but very human, I think.
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Posted by Lucid Peacock to academicsecret at 11/26/2006 02:43:54 AM
